Do the smart thing and walk away

Question: I’ve just read this comment from another tech: 1. Server 08Has a Vista backbone, and all of the quirks and nusances that go alongwith being beta tested on as a customer. (shame on you MS) 2. Vista isan IT Professionals nightmare. With 7 different flavors of the same OS,all but three are essentially “home versions” that have variousfunctionality hollowed out of them. This was done in an effort to gougeyou into buying Ultimate, Business, or Enterprise additions which arethe equivalent of XP Pro, respectively. Unless you have one of these 3,you can give up the hopes of remote desktop sessions, or having theability to join a domain. 3. Vista and XP do not play nice together. Simply put….Not compatible in a networked enviroment. 4. Unless yourclient has A shiny New 08 server, with all workstations being VistaBusiness, and some pretty deep pockets to pay you for reaserch and Admintime…. Do the smart thing and walk away. What are your comments on2008?

So during the www.thirdtier.net webcast with Amy and Eriq, one of the Q&A questions was this one above. Wow. There are just so many things one can comment about that question isn’t there? Let’s first get some reality. While one may not like all of the Home Premium, Basic and what not, the three business versions of Vista including Ultimate, Business and Enterprise are indeed the only ones that will join a domain. It is what it is.

Next, the idea that Vista and XP do play nice together. I guess I must be the oddball as I can get them to play nice.

The idea that unless your client only has Server 2008 and Vista that you need to walk away from Windows 2008?

Now there are those that call my hestiation to go hog wild on cloud solutions as being one sided cloud bashing. Personally, I call it making personal decisions for my firm and holding back to watch the fallout before choosing sides. As I have stated before “at this time, for MY firm” I cannot recommend changing my premises solutions to a cloud one. They are not comparable at this time with the technology I have and what I plan to have.

But that doesn’t mean that I’m advocating that one puts their head in the sand, doesn’t sign up for betas for such things, should look to a cloud vendor to partner with and what not.

And I’m certainly not advocating the attitude evidenced in that question. For that tech that originally posted the original comment, why in the world are you in technology in the first place for heaven’s sake? Did you have a hard time learning Windows NT? Did you hate moving to Windows 2000? If that was a change you embraced, what has changed between then and now?

If technology is your job and this is your attitude maybe this is time to reevaluate your career choices? I don’t mean to be harsh or rude, but the attitude that I see in that post floors me and I see it much too often on the web lately…this closed attitude.

I’m not willing to learn.

I’m not willing to investigate.

I’m not willing to sign up for betas.

For the record I have and will continue to investigate cloud offerings. I am deploying Vista. I have Windows Server 2008. I plan on SBS 2008. My plans may change. My decisions may change. I will still be cautious and hold back and watch what the vendors do and move and change to and guide MY firm accordingly. But to say “Do the smart thing and walk away”…. I think that person needs to take a break from technology.

3 Thoughts on “Do the smart thing and walk away”

Hilarious that you say “holding back to watch the fallout” but yet you yourself are jumping on this not even service packed SBS 2008 version and was praising the tenets of Vista pre-SP1.

“Did you have a hard time learning Windows NT? Did you hate moving to Windows 2000? If that was a change you embraced, what has changed between then and now?”

The operating systems no longer were in beta. Many of us do not want to be Microsoft’s guinea pig. We want stable environments. We don’t want to test for Microsoft. We want fewer reboots (why I had to reboot for three random patches for Vista today, I’ll fathom a guess that it had to do with Vista stability…)

SBS 2008 is not un-tested and not service packed. You’ll not be a guinea pig. Think about it. SBS is a collection of previously released, service packed and updated applications. Someone else has already gone through the process for you. SBS 2008 is as rock solid as the unlying applications. As I stated during the presentation, it’s not the applications that need to come up to speed, its us technicians.